THE BIG ISSUE 10 -- 23 JAN 2014 25
MARK OCCHILUPO "OCCY" ; AUSTRALIA'S 1999 WORLD SURFING
CHAMPION, SUNSET BEACH, HAWAII, 1987. PHOTOGRAPH BY JEFF DEVINE
LONG BEFORE ACTOR John Wayne embraced the nickname
‘Duke’ (not surprisingly, given that he had been christened
Marion), another Duke was making waves in Australia. Duke
Kahanamoku was a Hawaiian aquatic sensation – winner of the
100m freestyle event at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. He was
also renowned for his ability to walk on water – well, at least
stand on waves using only a length of timber as a support.
Duke’s fame even spread to Tasmania, where a writer for
The Launceston Examiner claimed he had “semi-amphibian
ancestors”. From an early age, the breathless correspondent
claimed, “the Hawaiian is never wholly out of sound of the soft
lap-lap of the waves on the reefs surrounding his native islands.
The sea is his mother, father and playmate…”
With such a reputation, it is not surprising that Kahanamoku
was invited to Australia in 1914. In Sydney, he competed in
a swimming carnival and gave an exhibition of surfng, on a
board he made himself. This gave rise to his status as the frst
surfer to ride a board in Australia.
But, as Tim Baker argues in his book Australia's Century
of Surf (the hundred years starting with Duke’s visit, which
attracted immense publicity), he was far from being the
first. Tommy Walker of the Manly Seagulls Surf Club, for
example, had already proved himself to be a proficient
surfboard rider, as evidenced by a report in the Sydney
Telegraph from the Freshwater Carnival early in 1912:
“With his Hawaiian surf board [Mr Walker] drew much
applause for his clever feats, coming in on the breaker
standing balance on his feet or his head.”